ART-PRESENTATION: Rosemarie Trockel-Knitted Works

Rosemarie Trockel first exhibited geometric knitted works in 1985, and later started using her mass-produced fabrics to make balaclavas and other items of clothing. Her early geometric patterns were followed by well-known images and logos, from the Playboy Bunny to hammers and sickles and swastikas. In such works, the differences between decorative motif, logo and ideological symbols are disturbingly blurred.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Skarstedt Archive

Rosemarie Trockel in her solo exhibition “Knitted Works” at Skarstedt presents knitted wool paintings from the ‘80s and early ‘90s, this is the first exhibition in the UK dedicated to this early body of work. In choosing wool and knitting, a material and technique traditionally associated with the female domestic realm and craft, Trockel explores the negative connotations of these ‘inferior materials and skills’. Distinguishing her practice from traditional craft, Trockel made blueprints for her designs and had them produced by a technician using computerised machinery. By mechanically producing the knitted patterns, she questions whether the cliché of women’s art relates solely to the choice of materials or whether it is also influenced by the treatment of these materials. “I wanted to know what causes a given kind of work to be regarded by women as embarrassing, both in the past and in the present: whether this has to do with the way the material is handled or whether it really lies in the material itself”. Incorporating serial patterns and identifiable logos, the knitted paintings highlight the manipulation of visual culture through signs and logos. In “Made in Western Germany”, one of Trockel’s most recognizable knitted works, she makes reference not only to her German background but also to the commodification of art in a consumerist society. Repeating the phrase in a linear composition across the large-scale knitted plane, Trockel highlights this culturally loaded motif and its industrial production method, as well as engaging questions of originality, with notable reference to Warhol’s Pop art aesthetic. In works such as “Untitled” (1992), Trockel presents her own interpretation of this subject explored most notably by Warhol for its blurring of abstraction and representation. The works in the exhibition highlight the tension between Trockel’s use of feminine materials and the masculine techniques used to create them. In “Who Will Be In In ’99” (1988) featuring a computer-rendered black geometric structure, Trockel pokes subtle jest at the repeated citation of the ‘60s male artists as provoking a radical reconsideration of the nature of painting. Subverting the embedded hierarchies and outdated gender politics through her combination of materials and methods, Trockel paves way for a revised way of looking and attributing value to artistic production.

Info: Skarstedt, 8 Bennet Street, St James’s, London, Duration: 7/6-4/8/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, Sat 10:00-17:00, www.skarstedt.com